Arieswoman Posted July 17, 2015 Share Posted July 17, 2015 (edited) Goodyblue, He was a bit of a doormat but he has worked on speaking up for himself. OK, so he had poor coping skills? And he chose to stay in a poor situation And now he's done some work on himself and changed. Good, I'm sure he'll feel happier for being more assertive. --------------------------------------------------- A friend of mine had an affair with a married man. Both of them had grown up kids who had left home. She was a widow. The BS was a harriden of a women with an alchohol problem. She abused MM verbally for years and my friend was often a witness to this, as her company did business with their company. MM paid for BS to go into rehab to be "dried-out" several times. He "future faked" with my friend for years. He said he couldn't leave BS because he would lose half the business. Eventually the business went bust because her drunken behaviour upset customers who pulled their accounts out of it. He turned up on my friend's doorstep with a suitcase one night because the baliffs had been round and taken possession of the house, and he had nowhere to go. She took him in and he lived with her for a few years until he died. Now that BS was a very troubled person with a lot of problems, and made that guy's life a misery. But he did not have to stay and she didn't deserve to be cheated on. Edited July 17, 2015 by Arieswoman Link to post Share on other sites
goodyblue Posted July 17, 2015 Share Posted July 17, 2015 Goodyblue, OK, so he had poor coping skills? And he chose to stay in a poor situation And now he's done some work on himself and changed. Good, I'm sure he'll feel happier for being more assertive. --------------------------------------------------- A friend of mine had an affair with a married man. Both of them had grown up kids who had left home. She was a widow. The BS was a harriden of a women with an alchohol problem. She abused MM verbally for years and my friend was often a witness to this, as her company did business with their company. MM paid for BS to go into rehab to be "dried-out" several times. He "future faked" with my friend for years. He said he couldn't leave BS because he would lose half the business. Eventually the business went bust because her drunken behaviour upset customers who pulled their accounts out of it. He turned up on my friend's doorstep with a suitcase one night because the baliffs had been round and taken possession of the house, and he had nowhere to go. She took him in and he lived with her for a few years until he died. Now that BS was a very troubled person with a lot of problems, and made that guy's life a misery. But he did not have to stay and she didn't deserve to be cheated on. I don't think people 'deserve' to be cheated on. I do, however, feel that they should realize their bad behaviour goes into the thought process of a spouse when they cheat. No vow is more important than another. The vows our b.s. broke wounded him as much as our affair wounded her. It just did. There I is no excuse for either one. The difference? We took responsibility for our folly, she has yet to do so. We don't need her to do it for us, she should do it for herself. Link to post Share on other sites
cocorico Posted July 17, 2015 Share Posted July 17, 2015 Cocorico, You quote an extreme example of a life & death situation. (However, they did not harm anyone in order to survive.) Many people in a theatre of war, had to kill people in order to survive. However, we are not talking about bootcamp at Basra here. I find it hard to believe than anyone, in a bad marital situation, could feel so powerless and in fear of their own existence that they felt that cheating would somehow solve the problem? What does that say about their own coping skills, conflict avoidance behaviours? I have worked in healthcare for many years and have known many women in bad relationships ( both socially and workwise) where they were abused both physically and mentally, both overtly and insidiously. The majority of these women got professional help and left, (sometimes with only the clothes on their backs and a bag of nappies for the baby). Not one of them, that I know of, thought that f***ing the milkman or the telephone engineer was a solution to their situation. I won't speculate about hypothetical situations involving obsolete jobs. My point was simple - in situations perceived by those in them to be extreme, people can act "out of character" in ways not predicted by their behaviour hitherto, nor likely to recur once they are out of the extreme (as perceived by them) situation. He Andes air crash was an example; there are many others less sensational. That suicide is so often precipitated by relationship failure indicates that, to a significant number of people, relationship failure is indeed "a matter of life and death", and thus extreme enough to trigger behaviour out of the norm. It's a simple point, supported by a vast amount of evidence. Anecdotal evidence claiming never to have encountered a phenomenon is not proof that the phenomenon does not exist. I have never seen a chipmunk, but I would not presume to claim that they did not exist simply because I had never seen one. Link to post Share on other sites
Arieswoman Posted July 17, 2015 Share Posted July 17, 2015 cocorico, My point was simple - in situations perceived by those in them to be extreme, people can act "out of character" in ways not predicted by their behaviour hitherto, nor likely to recur once they are out of the extreme (as perceived by them) situation. I agree. There are cases on record of "battered wives" stabbing/shooting their abuser. And, sadly, there are cases on record of relationship failure (usually abandonment) being a precursor to suicide by the abandoned party. However, I have yet to see or hear any relationship where one party felt that cheating was the only solution to an "extreme" situation. Cheating doesn't happen by accident. It requires planning and organisation. If someone has enough mental energy to orchestrate this, then, IMO, they have enough mental energy to get their ducks in a row and get out of this perceived "extreme" situation. I was single and dating for 15 years and in that time got hit on by a great many married men. Not one of them could explain rationally, why, if their situation was so bad, they were still there. The usual excuse was that they didn't want to give her half the house when they'd paid for it! What they couldn't see was that if they cheated and got caught, she could divorce them and get half the house anyway ! Link to post Share on other sites
WasOtherWoman Posted July 17, 2015 Share Posted July 17, 2015 I stand by what I say about past behaviour being a determining factor of future behaviour. . I absolutely agree with you. Regardless of WHY my husband chose to cheat all those years ago, regardless of what the state of his marriage was back then, the end result is that he somehow justified cheating on his xw. Granted, we have a different dynamic, a different marriage. I have not cheated on him, he is a very attentive husband, but still.... should our marriage deteriorate I would be a fool if I did not consider the possibility that he could cheat on me. Can I hope that doesn't happen? Of course. We both take steps to try to make sure that we don't lose our focus on each other and our marriage (easy to do with our kind of jobs). But, if i really stop and think about it, clearly he is capable of cheating. 1 Link to post Share on other sites
velvette Posted July 17, 2015 Share Posted July 17, 2015 He flight that crashed in the Andes resulted in the survivors eating their fellow passengers, in order to survive. None had previously been cannibals; none were cannibals since. It was a survival strategy to cope with an extremely stressful situation. That is what many people who have As feel about heir own "cheating". Silly comparison. The survivors of the Andes crash did not "feel" they were in an extremely stressful situation, they knew they were in a life and death situation and must have food to survive. And no doubt, if any of them by some statistically improbable chance were ever in the same situation again they would revert to being cannibals. Same logic applies to cheaters who have found cheating to be a coping mechanism. Even though they are wrong and there are multiple more healthy coping mechanisms (unlike for the Andes survivors), people generally resort to what they know. 1 Link to post Share on other sites
unluckycharms Posted July 30, 2015 Share Posted July 30, 2015 I have no doubt he'd do it to me too considering that he lied to me about being married for being months and then continued to lie to me that he had ended it and was going to file for divorce (eventually I figured out myself that his wife did not share the same point of view). Sadly, there were already strong feelings between us at this point and we weren't successful at cutting off contact right away, even after she found out. We had a sick obsession with each other that I'm convinced was unhealthy and even though I knew he was a terrible person it was a struggle to get away. Link to post Share on other sites
cocorico Posted July 30, 2015 Share Posted July 30, 2015 Silly comparison. The survivors of the Andes crash did not "feel" they were in an extremely stressful situation, they knew they were in a life and death situation and must have food to survive. And no doubt, if any of them by some statistically improbable chance were ever in the same situation again they would revert to being cannibals. I can live with that, comfortably. If by some statistically improbable chance I subject him To what she subjected him, and he responds in he way he did last time, fair enough. I would have deserved it. 1 Link to post Share on other sites
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